AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

Joe Overstreet (1933-2018) was an innovative artist who defied easy categorization. Interested in art from a young age he studied in California at different institutions but by 1958 he felt he had outgrown the West Coast and moved to New York where he became friends with many of the abstract expressionists and color field painters working there. Always politically motivated, many of his works from the 1960s directly referenced the civil rights movement, some such as The New Jemima(1964) are overtly figurative whereas others, such as 16th Street Birmingham (1963) and Strange Fruit (1965), are more abstract. In the late 1960s, urged by Frank Stella and Sam Gilliam, Overstreet began to create shaped, unprimed canvases painted in acrylic with bold geometric patterns that referenced his African and Shoshone heritage. These works, exemplified by North Star(1968) and Justice, Faith, Hope and Peace, presaged his growing interest in the sculptural possibilities of paintings. In his next, perhaps best-known series of works Overstreet freed himself from the stretcher altogether. His mandala paintings, such as Hoo Doo Mandala(1970), retain the geometric patterns of the shaped canvases but are stretched onto the surface of the wall. His slightly later flight patterns incorporate the soak-stain approaches of Gilliam and Frankenthaler and are held in taut geometric shapes through ropes attached to the walls, floors, and ceiling. Overstreet indicated that his use of ropes referenced both construction techniques used by Ancient Egyptians, and the ropes used in lynchings, while his desire to create easily transportable works was an homage to his nomadic ancestors who survived with our art by rolling it up and moving it all over."The founders of the Menil Collection, John and Dominique de Menil had a long association with Overstreet, purchasing The New Jemimaand several flight patterns. Through this connection he was invited by Larry Rivers to participate in the 1971 Some American Historyexhibition and in 1972 Dominique organized a solo show of Overstreets works at the Rice Institute for Arts. In 2025 the Menil Collection will open Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight,which brings together shaped canvases, mandalas, flight patterns and his seminal late series of oil paintings made after visiting Senegal in 1992. This exhibition, and access to Overstreets artworks and studio materials provided by the Eric Firestone Gallery and Corrine Jennings, Overstreets partner, provided an unparalleled opportunity to begin to examine Overstreets materials and methods. Overstreet said that My work has changed every picture I've ever made, because I'm searching for the unknown truth, but how did his materials and methods change over time? Non-destructive analysis by XRF and limited sampling revealed a shift in pigments, and an increasingly complicated painting process as he moved from shaped canvases to mandalas to flight patterns while his Senegal series marks a return to the use of oils, particularly those of the New Holland line. This is the first in-depth study of this seminal artists practice and helps reveal the various ways he sought to express his truth.